Two authors of the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill at the House of Representatives on Tuesday appealed to their colleagues to scrap three population control provisions in the measure.

While this is a pleasant surprise, what I find more revealing are their reasons for doing so (as reported by GMA News):

Gabriela Women’s party-list Reps. Emerenciana de Jesus and Luzviminda Ilagan said these three portions of House Bill 4244 or the consolidated RH bill may “release the floodgate[s] for the State to carry out its population control program under the guise of pro-choice and poverty alleviation.”

“These provisions must be deleted in the RH bill. Otherwise, the long saga of blaming the population, specifically women’s wombs, for the rising poverty in the country continues,” they said in a separate statement.

So poverty is caused by inequality and corruption, according to the GABRIELA reps. I agree. But I thought reducing population growth and family size in order to alleviate poverty was one of the main arguments in favor of the bill. That is the argument many people repeat ad nauseam. Where has it gone now?

Out the window, apparently!

The GABRIELA reps seem to have figured out that overpopulation is a myth, a convenient scapegoat to blame for poverty. The rest of the pro-RH gang, however, seem to be clueless!

The Angsioco gaffe

The real show-stopper, however, comes from Elizabeth Angsioco, who wrote a column entitled Unborn vs. Mother.

Angsioco was reacting to recent efforts in the Senate and the House to define abortifacients and to protect the unborn. In her column she stated:

First, all these bills speak of the unborn as a CHILD. I take issue with this because the Constitution does not call the unborn a child. If the framers meant to equate the former with the latter, they would have done that. An unborn can be anything from an egg, a zygote, to a fetus about to be born.

A child is someone who is born into this world, a complete human person like you and me.

A child is a citizen, and therefore, has human rights.

Calling the unborn a child to me is going beyond what the Constitution provides.

Is it just me or is it obvious that Angsioco is saying that the unborn are not persons and therefore have no human rights? If so, isn’t that the stance of pro-abortionists?

Apparently I am not the only one to have noticed this slip. WillyJ, in his blog article Angsioco versus unborn, notes:

With prominent RH bill proponent Elizabeth Angsioco’s latest tirade entitled “Unborn versus mother”, one is convincingly left without any iota of a doubt as to the main agenda of the RH bill: it is all about Abortion with a capital A. Unless the RH bill proponents disown Angsioco’s statements, her astonishing message reveals the strikingly clear motive. The title of her opinionated (and grossly erroneous) piece is in itself a dead giveaway.

WillyJ also takes issue with Angsioco’s interpretation of the Philippine Constitution:

So according to Angsiocotic philosophy, the unborn is not a complete person until it is “born into this world”. If the unborn is not a “complete person”, what is it then? A half-person? A quarter-person? Semi-person? A clump of inhuman cells? She attempts to bolster her argument by referring to the Constitution but I do not see anything in there that says the unborn is a partial human person. What I do see in there, is that the unborn is accorded by the State a presumptive personality from the moment of conception. A presumed person that merits protection by the State.

Granted, WillyJ is not a constitutional expert, but neither is Angsioco. WillyJ, however, buttresses his argument by citing a recognized constitutional expert and a member of the Constitutional Commission that drafted the Constitution itself: Fr. Joaquin Bernas (who, in his published columns, seems to have endeared himself to the pro-RH camp — what irony!):

If the state presumes the personhood of the unborn it does not consider it as an incomplete human unworthy of protection. She harps about the right of the mother (the unfettered right to abort, if that is not clear enough) and completely turns a blind eye to the right of the unborn. The records of the 1986 Commission flatly rejects her imaginations:

“Whats being affirmed in this formulation is the moral right as well as the constitutional right of the unborn child to life, If this should entail the granting of presumptive personality to the unborn befinning at the moment of the conception, then so be it. Xxx Respect for the rights of the woman with child and respect for the rights of the child in her womb are by nature intimately linked such that any deliberate harm that should come upon one will doubtless effect a corresponbding harm to the other. Conflicts of rights is fictitious. Xxx The conflict is only apparent. It is easily resolved by applying the following principle: When two rights come in conflict, the more basic right and/or the right concerning the graver matter takes precedence over rights involving the less basic or less serious matter. It is clear that the right to life is more basic than the right to privacy or any other posterior rights. Therefore, since removal of the fetus would most certainly result in violation of its right to life, the woman has no right to evict the temporary resident of her private womb.”

It looks like WillyJ got Angsioco riught between the eyes with that one. He not only exposed her ignorance of the Constitution, he also pointed out that she inadvertently let us in on the hidden agenda in her RH advocacy: the eventual legalization of abortion in the Philippines.

I wonder if this has gotten the RH supporters to think hard about the kind of leaders they have chosen to follow.